Why The Jetsons Will Have a Greater Impact on Human Civilization Than You May Think
In my previous article entitled “The Space Race and Urban Air Mobility — What Can We Learn From History?”, I introduced the revolution of flying taxis from a historical perspective, focusing on the wider impact of the Space Race on our global civilization in the last 60 years. In this article, I will be building upon the technological, political, societal, and economical precedent set by the Space Race, converging on the revolution of Urban Air Taxis (UATs) and its potential impact on our world in the near- to mid-term future.
Moving on From the Space Race to Flying Taxis
Urban Air Mobility — albeit the vision being somewhat less spectacular compared to the exploration of other planets, star systems, and galaxies — can draw parallels between itself and the Space Race in terms of the public skepticism, the high quality of intellectual capital needed, and the pace of development. Thus, it is essential to not get lost in comparing Boeings and Cessnas or much more accurately, rockets and eVTOLs, but cherry-pick the learnings we can acquire from aerospace and apply it to urban aviation. Allow me to navigate through this arduous task by diving deep into the flying taxi industry.
The Far-Reaching Impacts of Developing the UAM Industry
Besides the incredibly attractive vision as exemplified by the Uber Elevate and Airbus Pop.Up videos demonstrating potential customer journeys for urban eVTOL operations, there are wider benefits to our civilization from a politico-socio-economic perspective. However, it is essential here to point out which regions of the world will be reaping the maximum benefit from the onset of such a revolution.
Building upon the fact that the Space Race mostly benefited the innovating regions of the world (which you can read about extensively in my previous article), most of the benefits brought forward by the creation of a UAM industry will be realized if and only if the innovator and the consumer are located within the same geopolitical region i.e. the technology is developed in the country it will be sold and used in, eodem tempore.
The following schematic demonstrates this framework establishing the flow of technology and financial capital as units of benefit being exchanged between various regions of the globe determined by aerospace prowess.
It is clear from the above that there will be bigger winners and losers in this field as in any high-tech industry. Therefore, it is essential that countries with less know-how in aerospace exert a larger effort in allocating investment towards industries that are likely to hit home run in the long-term, such as UAM.
Looking at UAM from another political perspective, similar to the prestige race of the 60s between America and the USSR, the emergence of eVTOL hubs and technology clusters will be a significant leveraging stronghold for cities, citizens, and governments. By establishing — let’s say London and the U.K. — as THE leader of futuristic mobility solutions, the city and the country will be highly attractive both for people around the world visiting for leisure and attracting business opportunities from abroad. This will surely elevate the U.K. on the international political stage and shift the focus away from the somewhat negative image generated through Brexit towards the entrepreneurial and far-sighted spirit of the British business ecosystem.
Economically, although it is true that large amounts of venture capital directed towards ground & airspace infrastructure, vehicle design, certification, and manufacturing will be needed initially, these “costs” are likely to return to the economy of the region with large multipliers. According to the Porsche Consulting report entitled The Future of Vertical Mobility, the Urban Air Mobility market which not only comprises passenger transport but inspection, cargo, and supporting services, will likely hit a value of $74 billion by the year 2035. The breakdown of this forecast can be seen below.
With an optimal scenario for intracity passenger eVTOLs in which globally 200,000 vehicles operate in all types of cities (mega, medium, and small) with a major infrastructure build-out, this forecast rises from $32 billion to a total addressable market of $230 billion. The long-term economic benefits are quite obvious with these numbers as long as all stakeholders work in ultimate collaboration and social acceptance is not a major obstacle to the adoption of UAM solutions.
How about the economic costs associated with creating such a UAM system of systems in our major cities? There is no conclusive information publicly available from the industry, but — for example — from the point-of-view of infrastructure, the costs are expected to be vastly lower compared to other modes. In the developed world, building urban road infrastructure costs between $2.5 and $11 million per km whereas urban railway (over- and underground) costs somewhere between $75 and $150 million per km to build, including stations and rolling stock (2018 prices). Assuming 100 vertiports for a megacity with each vertiport accompanied by a charging station costing $4.1 million in total, a $401 million investment in infrastructure will be needed for an extensive flying taxi roll-out (ignoring other infrastructure relating to airspace management, emergency response, and so on).
This is roughly equal to 4 km of rail infrastructure in cost!
Keep in mind that London, which is going to be the first megacity of Europe by the 2030s (+10 million inhabitants and 2000+ people per square-km), currently has above 400 km of tube connecting all parts of Greater London utilizing the most efficient form of public transportation available to the city, (yet).
From a hardware perspective, it is forecasted that bringing an eVTOL from concept exploration to certification and full-scale production will cost anywhere between $0.5–1 billion. Considering only infrastructure and eVTOL design & manufacturing whilst ignoring innovations in regulation, airspace management, and other key technological enablers, the cost to unveil air taxi operations for a single city with a single eVTOL design will likely be in the order of 10s of billions of dollars, paving the way for a “multitrillion-dollar market” to emerge in the long-term future according to Robert Pearce, Deputy Associate Administrator for Strategy at NASA. Thus, the creation of such a ginormous industry is likely to create many more peripheral industries and opportunities for entrepreneurs to bring innovative ideas onto the table, leading to significant momentum in the creation of jobs within the region of innovation and consumption.
From a technological perspective, even if the UAM industry is doomed to fail due to a myriad of reasons of which a fatal accident could be one, it is likely to create spillover effects from technologies specifically developed for aerial mobility solutions. The following three technologies are examples in this space that are poised to have a wider-reaching influence external to eVTOLs:
- Decentralization of air traffic management (ATM) → The vision for Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM), which is going to replace today’s half a century-old way of controlling air traffic, involves the restructuring of a central authority by opening up the whole system to multiple service providers. This advancement, which is going to be heavily dominated by the push to implement UAM technologies in the next 5–10 years, will likely be composed of a more modular and flexible ATM. Thus, the path will be paved for an architecture that will be more open to future transportation technologies that have not even been conceived by today’s engineers, yet.
- Innovation in certification standards → Initiated by the recent overhaul of Part 23 airworthiness standards for general aviation aircraft, the emergence of novel flight technologies such as electric propulsion systems is pushing the regulatory bodies to adopt more flexible and innovation-friendly methods of certification. As no one really knows for sure how various vehicle configurations of eVTOLs (tilt-rotor, tilt-wing, lift+push, multicopter, hybrid-electric, pure electric, fully autonomous, self-piloted, etc.) will be certified and under which aviation regulations, the advent of UAM vehicle designs will likely influence regulatory revisions more friendly to future innovations.
- Noise reduction technologies → Since for any UAM solution to be successful, noise generated by these vehicles need to be competitive to a “Prius approaching at 35 mph at 25 ft” according to the Uber Elevate white paper. Innovative solutions to this problem, such as the research initiated by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory on co-rotating propellers 10-degrees apart in phase, are all radical improvements to aeronautical science.
True, these innovations seem quite specific to UAM or aviation use cases. However, the ripple effects of such technological advancements may have unexpected applications or parallelisms in unrelated industries. For instance, check out this great article on the Forbes on what the future of mobility industries can learn from the internet for a successful execution.
So What?
Although various positive impacts of UAM upon our civilization have been touched upon above, I believe that such a technology that has tremendous power to revolutionize mobility and change the way we live in our cities have to be apparent to the public with regards to all of its long-term spillover benefits to society. It is quite obvious that UAM is likely to provide alleviation to today’s problems of urban congestion and air pollution. However, for the responsible and swift adoption of eVTOLs in the foreseeable future, it is imperative to treat the public on the same level as any other UAM stakeholder. Thus, there is tremendous amount of work to be done in many aspects, but public acceptance should be a priority if we desire a future that draws upon the vision of the Jetsons.
It is essential to contemplate that even the mere vision of high-tech innovations have grabbed the utmost attention of humanity as exemplified in the last two centuries of our civilization. Much like how a 6-year-old is inspired to become an astronaut watching the epic sci-fi film Avatar, “aeromobiles” roaming our cities in the next 10 years will mesmerize those looking up into the sky into becoming the next Louis Blériot to cross the English Channel with an eVTOL, Tom Enders to lead one of the greatest aerospace companies in the world, and Neil Armstrong to set foot on the next frontiers of exploration.
The future is closer than you think. Let’s all work diligently towards enabling democratized aerial mobility, Aviation 4.0!
Pamir Sevincel is a Founding Partner of The Aviary Project, a wide-reaching initiative connecting all stakeholders of the Urban Air Mobility movement. Following his experience as an aerospace engineer and a businessman focused on the eVTOL startup ecosystem, he is very passionate on democratizing aerial mobility, making it cheap & accessible for everyone, and bringing eVTOL operations to the U.K. in a swift and responsible manner.
Get in touch with Aviary if you would like to be a part of this revolution!
